SAP to provide deeper demand sensing

SAP this week said it will provide users with new capabilities to improve companies’ demand management and business planning processes, focusing on tools with a real-time view of market information.
The applications, SAP Enterprise Demand Sensing, is meant to allow companies to link market activity, including sentiment from social networks, to demand patterns.
“Capabilities within the new release improve the quality of demand forecasts within the short-term horizon in order to help reduce stock-outs and expediting costs and ultimately boost sales,” SAP said in a statement. “The application captures historical forecast trends, compares and mathematically blends different forecast sources with demand analytics and characterizes demand by analyzing historical forecast accuracy, bias and intermittency trends.”
The new module is intended to dovetail with another recent release from SAP, it’s SAP Demand Signal Management application, which is powered by SAP’s in-memory database technology.
“The availability of these demand management tools is a game changer for SAP customers,” said Hans Thalbauer, senior vice president of line-of-business solutions for supply chain at SAP. “Predictive analytics capabilities allow users to significantly increase the short-term forecast, which in turn boosts sales and increases profits, all using a connected enterprise.”American Shipper reported earlier this year on the impact social networks may have on demand forecasting.